Learn Australian English in this vlog episode of the Aussie English Podcast where I talk about what happens when you stop learning grammar.
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AE 455 – What Happens When You Stop Learning Grammar?
What a shit day. Do you know what else’s shit? Grammar.
What is going on, guys. I’ve come all the way down to Geelong this week to see folks and hang out with one of my mates, James. So, yeah, (I’m) just going to make some coffee. Coffee, coffee, coffee. I got this. This is what you got to resort to sometimes, guys. Oh, look at that! Little chocolate sprinkler. That’s really lame.
What do you reckon, guys? Is going to be good or is it going to be really, really horrible. Tear here, huh? So, that looks like crap. That looks like absolute crap. Can you see that, guys? Oh, my gosh! What is that? Is that sand? Far out. That is so funny.
Oh, it’s powdered milk! So, I get it. So, beautiful. Then you mix it in anyway, right? Amazing, amazing. Oh, that’s really hot. Really, really hot. That’s not bad. Not bad. Nestlé instant coffee, guys.
What is going on, guys? I am out here. Friend’s place. This is my back yard, the garage here. What have we got? The house here and a garden that his parents have really cultivated quite a lot.
But, I thought I would chat today about grammar, okay, and, I guess, making a push from intermediate to advanced. So, grammar, grammar, grammar, grammar, grammar. Why should you stop focusing on grammar? Why should you let go of studying grammar? And what happens when you do?
We all know the grammar’s kind of important. Obviously, it’s really important for obvious reasons, in any language, if you want to be clearly understood, you need to have good grammar.
I guess the point isn’t so much, today, that I want to say that you shouldn’t learn any grammar, but it’s how you go about learning it. So, for a long time, when I was doing French, I was learning grammar out of a book. I would just sit there and do exercises again and again and again, and I wasn’t focusing on a conversation. I wasn’t really using the language as much as I could. And more recently, at least with Portuguese, I’ve kind of done the complete inverse, the complete opposite, where I’ve refused to open any grammar books. I’m not looking up any rules at the moment. I’m just focusing on using the language. I’m just speaking, speaking, speaking. I make so many mistakes. But the interesting thing here is that even though I am making so many more mistakes I’m having, I feel, more complicated conversations, I am using the language a hell of a lot more, and I am not feeling as uncomfortable now when using the language despite, I think, making even more mistakes. So, when I was using French all the time, I would be obsessing over being correct. French has, at least for English speakers, relatively difficult grammar. And so, I wanted to focus on learning that, and I would always think in my head before speaking. I would always be like, “Okay. I want to use this structure. I want to say this certain thing. How do I place this sentence together?”.I would be thinking. I’d be sitting now. I would be trying to say the sentence in my head before I would go out and just say it. And it would lead to a lot of anxiety. It lead to a lot of overthinking when ultimately that interaction that you’re going to have with whoever it is, the native speaker who you’re about to say something to is just not going to care if you get things slightly wrong, if you misplace words, if you conjugate things incorrectly, if you use the wrong noun. Ultimately, what they care about is understanding you, whether you’re correct, or whether you’re incorrect. They just want to communicate, they want to understand what you’re trying to say, and they want to have that, I guess, interaction go well.
So, that’s the good thing, the good part, at least for me. I would be very anxious and very nervous when wanting to or having to speak with native speakers in French. I would put myself down. I would think my French was horrible when in reality it wasn’t that bad and I could speak much better French in reality than I would let myself speak, because I was always holding myself back stuck in my head.
So, the complete inverse has occurred with Portuguese now where I am talking, talking, talking, talking with Kel my fiancée all the time now, and I’m incorrect. Probably almost every single sentence that I say there is something that’s incorrect, whether it’s grammar, whether it’s pronunciation, whether it’s word choice, something is incorrect, but I’m communicating and that is the best part about this, right? That’s the whole point that you’re learning English. You’re not learning English to be correct, you’re learning English to communicate, to be able to express your opinions, to be able to understand the opinions of other people, right?
And so, at the moment, it’s really been interesting. For the last week and a half, two weeks, I have just been focusing on experiencing content… Are you kidding me? It’s started raining. Alright, I’m going to have to get under the cover. Get under cover.
Alright, for the last… Alright, for the last few weeks, I’ve just been focusing on exposing myself to sentences when I’m training. What I’m actually studying, what I’m doing is, I’m listening to real sentences from real native speakers and I am saying them out loud to work on my pronunciation and also train my brain for those patterns of how these words are constructed in these sentences. So, this is what I would suggest. If you want to learn grammar, this is a different approach, this is a more passive approach, as opposed to active approach. I’m not actively using a book. I’m not actively, systematically going through a book to learn rules and then try and apply them. Instead, I’m just exposing myself to natural language and then trying to use that when I speak.
One good example the other day was that I was studying in bed with Kel next to me, and in Portuguese, instead of saying… I’m to remember the example. So, instead of saying, “I usually do something”, like “I usually go to the shops”, “I usually have a shower in the morning”, “I usually eat breakfast in the morning”. In stead of, “I usually do something”, which is a structure that we use in English all the time, the Portuguese say, “Eu costumo”, “Eu costumo”, which is like, “I…”, How would you translate that? “I…” and then the verb for like “accustomed”, to do something… It means “to do something usually”.
Anyway. The structure’s completely different. So, what I did was that I was studying these sentences and quite a few of these sentences used this structure. “Eu costumo andar”. So, “I usually walk”. “Eu costumo ter cafe da manhã as sete horas”. “I usually have breakfast at seven o’clock”. And so… and I remember this now, after doing this, I was doing these sentences, I finished my sort of study of just reading the sentences out loud, thinking about them, saying them, saying them, saying them, and then I turned to Kel, my fiancée, and this is also what’s useful if you have someone who you can speak with, and I said, “I’m going to try and use as many examples as possible of “eu costumo”, “eu costumo”. Can you correct me and tell me if I’m wrong or can you ask me more?”.
So, that was a really, really good passive way, I feel, of picking up an important part of grammar that I’m going to use too. And that’s another point. When you do this, you focus on it using the language that is important to you and important to your everyday life. You don’t need to learn every single rule in English, because you’re not going to use every single rule in English, at least on a day to day basis. You need to passively be able to understand what’s happening in English, but you don’t necessarily need to know the grammar rules to do that, right?
So, anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing recently and it’s been so, so, so, freeing. It’s really, really allowed me to stop being so anxious, to stop… Sorry, there’s mosquitoes. Get away from me! …to stop freaking out, to stop being in my head so much, to stop thinking so much, and it’s allowed my language to flow so much more readily when I speak. So, now when I speak with Kel, even after only a week and a half, my language, my Portuguese, has made leaps and bounds ahead of where it was just because I’ve kind of let go. I’m definitely making many, many, many, more mistakes than I was, but I’m also using the language a hell of a lot more than I was and I’m not worrying as much as I was in the past. I’m not in my head freaking out thinking, “Am I going to be wrong? Am I going to look like an idiot?”. I no longer care.
And this was a really good point too, and something that I wanted to mention. I watched a lecture recently about how polyglots learn languages. So, a polyglot is someone who learns many languages, or at least who can speak many languages. So, these people tend to learn one language for a year or two, and then they’ll switch to another language, and another language, and quite often, you find out that they speak, you know, five, eight, 10, sometimes even 20 languages, guys. It’s ridiculous. And it’s easy for the average person to put them on a pedestal and to think these people are just non-humans who have this special gift for learning languages, but the lecture was showing that that, in fact, isn’t the case. These people have a system, which the system quite often differs, for at least how they like to get started, but towards the, I guess, intermediate to advance area of any language that they’re learning, quite often, they’re all similar in that they make as many mistakes as they can and they don’t care about making mistakes, and they speak as often as they can and focus a lot more on communication. Okay?
So, I’ve been talking for a bit. It’s kind of just been a stream of thought following my train of thought. I wanted to get this out there and I wanted to ask you guys, how were you learning grammar right now? And maybe, do you think it could be potentially a time or sort of a chance for you to mix things up a bit, to change things and to try something different? So, if you are a bit stuck on where you’re not improving a whole lot, you’re feeling like you don’t have much confidence when you speak, you’re too in your head, maybe this is something that you should focus on. So, try maybe and go out, find a native speaker whether online whether in person in Australia if you’re here, obviously, and just… the next time that you have a chance to talk with them, don’t focus on grammar. Correct yourself. You know, if you make mistakes and you notice those mistakes getting made, correct yourself. And this makes you look smarter by the way. Every time I make a mistake at the moment and I notice it I correct myself and Kel’s always like, “Wow, you know what’s going on! That’s really, really good!”. So, speak as much as you can, use your English, don’t focus on mistakes, aside from maybe counting how many are making and the more you make the better. You know? Give yourself a pat on the back the more mistakes you make.
Anyway. Let’s have a chat in the comments, guys. I want to know how you’re learning grammar, how you’re learning to improve your English, and what you’re doing at the moment, and what you’ve had success with, and yeah maybe we can talk a bit about this another time as well.
So, that’s it for today, guys. I’m going to get inside before these mosquitoes eat me alive and I will tell you soon. Peace out.
Yeah, look at this. (It) rained for like all of 10 seconds.
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Ep053: Expression – To Kick The Dog
In this episode I explain the expression “to kick the dog” as well as how and when it is used. This may be a much more Australia specific, or even my family specific, expression, and it’s said in a more humorous setting.
Download the full PDF transcript here.
Ep053: Expression – To kick The Dog
G’day guys! Welcome to this episode of Aussie English.
Today I’m going to do another expression involving animals, and this one is
a little more Australian. It could be even a little more just my family, ‘cause it’s the kind of thing that my grandparents used to say quite a bit and especially my father, and I thought that I would add it in because it’s a little more humorous, it’s a little dirtier, it’s a little funnier.So, the phrase today or the idiom, expression today is going to be, “To kick the dog”, “To kick the dog”. When do we use this expression? This is the kind of expression that my father would use if someone farted. So, if someone passed wind, if they let gas out of their rear end, you know, [the sound of someone farting], if you fart, and in order to sort of cover the fact that you accidentally farted and made a sound. So it’s done when people notice when you’ve made the sound [the sound of someone farting] So, when you fart [the sound of someone farting] when you’ve made that sound and someone’s accidentally overheard it. In order to kind of cover your tracks, in order to get away with it, my father would often say “oh, kick the dog!”, as in kick the dog and blame him for farting, you know? So, if the dog farted you’d kick the dog. So if someone overheard someone farting they could kind of cover it up or make a joke of it by saying “oh, kick the dog, mate!”
So, let’s go through what the different words in this phrase mean.
“To kick”, I’m sure most of you know what it means. It’s to hit with your foot. So, if you kick something, you can kick a ball, you can kick a person and you can kick a dog [as] in this expression.
And “a dog” is an animal with four legs, fur, it has a tail. It wags its tail. It’s known as man’s best friend in English, and dogs often fight with cats. I’m sure you all know what a dog is. That’s a dog.
So, yeah, it’s almost exclusively used in that sense at least with my family that is when we would use the phrase “to kick a dog”. However, you can also use this phrase when referring to people taking something out, so, say um…, say you’ve gone to work and you’re boss above you has taken out a lot of his anger or issues or something on you. If you go home and then kick the dog and take out your anger and your issues on the dog that phrase can often be used to explain that situation. So, for when someone is sort of being bullied or being mistreated by someone above them, someone like their boss, someone who is employing them, someone that’s above them. If they go then and take it out on their wife or their kids or someone who is below them that act can also be called “kicking the dog”. So, you’re taking it out on the dog, you’re kicking the dog. However, in this sense I would always think of, when someone says kick the dog to me, that someone’s farted. So I would always… you know, it’s kind of a humorous situation that you would use to kind of make a joke about the fact that someone accidentally passed wind, they accidentally farted and someone’s heard it.
So, let’s do an exercise quickly:
Jesus, mate kick the dog.
Jesus, mate kick the dog.
Jesus, mate kick the dog.
Jesus, mate kick the dog.
Jesus, mate kick the dog.
Jesus, mate kick the dog.
So, that was the phrase “to kick the dog”, guys. Hope you liked it, and I’ll chat to you soon. Have a good one!
If you liked this expression episode guys then please jump over here and check out all the other Aussie English expression episodes to help you improve your Aussie English.
Also be sure to come over to the Aussie English Facebook page and chat to the many other Aussie English learners. Practice a few of these words or phrases, ask any questions you may have, and be a part of the conversation! All the best guys!
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AE 484: How to Improve Your English with Reflective Practice
Learn Australian English in this episode of the Aussie English Podcast where I talk about how to improve your English with REFLECTIVE PRACTICE.
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AE 484: How to Improve Your English with Reflective Practice
G’day, guys. What’s going on? So, this is where one day usually starts. In the kitchen here, I have my new lens and camera, which I’ve been practising with like crazy, got my computer here with photos on it, and that I’ve got this, which isn’t breakfast, but it’s what I’ve been putting outside to get birds to come closer for me to photograph. So, I put it on the ground here, put it on the roof over here, and it brings birds in close so I can use this camera right here to take photos.
So, today we’re going to talk about reflective practice and how you can use it to improve your English as fast as possible no matter what your level. Let’s go!
How’s it going, guys? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English. Today, I’m going to chat about the fastest way to improve your English no matter what your level, guys. And I’m going to sort of draw an analogy to what I’ve been battling with recently and photography. Let’s go.
Alright, guys. So, the topic for today is Reflective Learning, Reflective Learning. I wonder if you guys have heard about Reflective Learning before. So, I’ve been researching this recently. My dad was the first one to sort of drill this into me quite a bit, and that’s because he was a high school teacher and a lecturer at university for quite a while so he had a background in teaching. But I’ve been applying this recently to photography, as well as a bunch of other things like Portuguese as well, and I’m learning Portuguese, but photography is what I want to talk about today.
So, Reflective Learning, I learnt about this from Donald Schon. Okay? So, he was an American from M.I.T., a social scientist, and he did a lot of research into Reflective Learning in the 80s and 90s.
So, there are three main kinds of reflective learning.
The very first one is Knowing-in-Action. So, this is when you do what you already know whilst you’re doing it, right? So, you imagine that you are speaking English with someone, you are using the English you already know, you are ‘Knowing-in-Action’, you’re using what you know in action.
The second type is Reflection-in-Action, and this is where you are doing that thing like speaking English, but you reflect, you think about what’s going on. So, maybe you make a mistake and you think, oh, was that the right word? Was that the right tense? Was that the right adjective that I should have used? You’re ‘Reflecting-in-Action’.
And the third kind and most important kind that I want to dig into a bit more today for you guys is Reflection-on-Action, Reflection-on-Action. And this is when you reflect on the action you’ve done, obviously, after the fact. So, for instance, if you were speaking English with someone, it’s a session where you’re practising your English, maybe you’re getting a lesson with someone, maybe you’re just having a conversation with someone, but when you reflect on that later, if you reflect on it later, that is a Reflection-on-Action. You’re analyzing what you did. Could you have done a better? What else could you have done? What were your mistakes? Okay?
So, let’s get into that a bit more, how it applies to photography for me, and how you guys can improve your English by reflecting on action. Let’s go.
So, recently, guys, I’ve been coming to Mulligan’s Flat quite a bit and you guys are probably seen this in my Instagram posts, on YouTube in the videos. The main reason is that I’m trying to constantly practice the same thing again and again and again, or I guess, variations of the same thing, right?
So, there are lots of animals here. There are lots of little birds, lots of kangaroos, wallabies, all kinds of critters and creatures, and I’m trying to really hone in my photography skills. So, instead of sort of jumping from one thing to the next all the time and not analysing what I’ve done, how I’ve done it, how well I’ve gone, I’ve kept coming to the same place, I’ve kept photographing the same things, in the same locations, and I’ve kept analysing what I’ve been doing after the fact, right?
So, these are my practice sessions. This is where I spend an hour or two walking around, getting a bit of exercise, looking at the environment, finding the animals, and honing my skills when I take shots of the animals doing the same things every time that I’m out here. You know, there’ll be a bird on a branch and I’ll be thinking about: What angle do I need? Where’s the sun? What are my settings on my camera? What is the shutter speed, the aperture, all of these technical things related to the camera that I really need to work on and improve?
And the trouble I was having at first was that a lot of my photos were out of focus. The animals were too fast. The settings weren’t correct on the camera. The photos were overexposed, they were blurred, they were horrible, but I improved a really, really rapidly because of Reflective Practice, guys. Okay? Let’s just focus on that for a sec.
Alright, so how have I been applying Reflective Practice to photography? Obviously, I’ve been doing number one: I have a certain set of skills in photography that I already know and when I come out and take photos here, I use those skills. Knowing-in-Action.
Number two. I’m reflecting in action. I’m taking photos, I’m looking at the photos as soon as I’ve taken them, I’m zooming in, I’m thinking, with the hell of a done wrong? Why don’t I like this? How could I improve this? Is there something wrong with it? I’m scrutinizing those images and I’m thinking in the moment, I’m reflecting in the moment, on what I’ve done and how I could improve that.
But then number three. I’m reflecting afterwards. So, I come out here, I do my one, two hours, however long it is, I take a few thousand photos, I go home, and I sit down, load all the photos onto my computer, and I start going through them. And I start looking at the ones that I like. I sort them out, delete the rest, and then I start scrutinizing the ones that I like and I think, how could I have improved them? Or, what I like about them? What have I done right and what could I do more of in the future?
And if I’m having specific problems like maybe the animal is too blurred, and I’ll show you some of these photos in a second and how I’ve hopefully improved. If the animals too blurred, I get on YouTube, I get on Google, and I start searching ‘how to take sharper images’, ‘I take blurry images, what do I do?’. So, I start looking at how I can improve on the mistakes that I’ve been making.
So, once I identify those mistakes and I sort of think about it, I reflect on those errors, I then plan my next practice session. I then think about next time I go out into Mulligan’s Flat, next time I go out and take some photos of whatever it is, birds, kangaroos, what thing am I going to focus on and try and improve upon? What skills have I just researched? What skills have I just learnt about in order to implement the next time that I go out? And that’s what I’m doing today. I’m out here again after spending the morning looking at a whole bunch of photos that I liked some of, but didn’t like most of it, and I’m thinking about, how can I sit down, how can I practice those, and how can I improve on those mistakes today?
And I’ll tell you what, guys, this has really helped me improve at a lightning pace. You could definitely do this by just coming out here all the time and taking as many photos as possible, but I think that would take a lot longer. In fact, you might improve, but you may not ever get to the level that you want to get to if you’re not scrutinising your own work and thinking about how to improve it in depth, and having that real reflective approach to improvement. Okay?
So, now let’s talk about this in English and how you guys can apply this to improving your English no matter what level you currently have. Okay? We’ll go up the top of the mountain. Let’s head up.
I think that was a bad idea. This hill’s really steep, guys. I’m going to have to wait for like 10 minutes once I get to the top just so that I’m not out of breath and you guys zone give me a hard time about my cardio abilities. Beautiful day though. Beautiful day!
I’ve been walking for like 10 minutes looking for these bloody kangaroos. First time ever I’ve been in Mulligan’s Flat and I couldn’t see kangaroos. I’ve come up this hill, come all the way down, these guys are here, the moment I set the tripod up and move towards it and clicked go, there’s dust and they’re gone. Anyway.
I wanted to chat to you guys about applying the Reflective Practice principle, theory, whatever it is, to your English. How this is going to help you improve your English no matter what your level is as fast as possible.
And instead of just giving you a bit of my mind spewed out, I want to try and give you some actionable… *Rosellas calling*. I want to try… Are you done? Good. I want to try and give you some actionable tips that you guys can apply to your English learning… whatever the ways that you set it up, okay? So, you’ve got a routine, a schedule, maybe you don’t even have one of these, but if you have a routine or schedule, I want you to try and apply these several tips and tricks to that schedule in order to improve your English. Okay?
Alright. So, number one. You need to define a practice session. Whatever it is, however it is that you’re practicing, when you’re practicing your English, I think you need to create a half an hour or maybe a 1-hour period at least once a week where you are actively practicing your English.
Number two. During those sessions, you need feedback. Whether it’s internal and it’s coming from you when you can work out what it is that you’re doing wrong, or whether it’s external and it’s coming from someone else, a friend, a family member, a tutor, a teacher, whoever it is, you need to be getting some kind of feedback on which you can then practice, you can scrutinize, you can improve upon.
Number three. You need to go away and practice on the feedback that you’ve just been given. What is it that you got wrong and how can you do it correctly next time?
Finally, number four, guys. You need to take this in mind and use it to organize your next practice session, and it becomes a cyclical process. You need to apply this every time you do this practice session and you’re going to get results that just compound. You’re going to improve a lot faster than if you were just winging it, you were just improvising, every single time.
So, I guess, finishing up. This is something that I always… I always get asked when I meet people who’ve been in Australia for a very long time, and they say to me, I’ve been here for nine years and my English hasn’t improved. What am I doing wrong? And I’ll ask them, how are you practising? Usually, they’ll say, I’m not. Or they’ll say, oh, I speak, but I don’t study. Or they will be studying, but they won’t be practising the things that they’ve studied.
So, that’s it for me today, guys. Hopefully, you got something useful out of this. Don’t forget to hit subscribe, don’t forget to hit that bell notification button if you would like to stay up to date with all the future episodes, and if you have suggestions, if you have questions for things you would like videos on, put them in a comment below. And now, it’s my turn to put my money where my mouth is, get out there, start taking some photos, maybe some videos as well, and working on what I’ve been trying to improve during my Reflective Practice sessions.
So, with that, guys, let’s go have a look and see what’s around today in Mulligan’s Flat.
Target acquired. I found this little bunch of trees here and I can hear them squeaking. These are these small birds that I’m after and I’m trying to get really sharp nice shots of, that I’ve been having quite a bit of trouble with recently. Let’s see how we go.
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AE 332 – WWP: In A Sunburned Country Book Review
Learn Australian English in this WWP episode of Aussie English where I review the book IN A SUNBURNED COUNTRY by Bill Bryson.
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AE 332 – WWP:
In A Sunburned Country Book Review
What’s going on guys? Welcome to this episode of Walking With Pete. I’m out here.
Just crossed the road from my house. Walking across Flemington Road and up into the park. Just felt like going for a little late-night walk.
I think it’s about 9:20, maybe 9:30, in the evening.
And it’s pretty cold. It’s pretty cold. I thought oh yeah I’ll only need one jumper.
And I walked outside, let the door shut behind me, and instantly it was like, ah…
Totally, should’ve gotten another one, but I’m sure I’ll get warm as soon as I start walking, I thought.
So, we’ll see how we go. But, I tell you what I’m so glad that I have grown a beard this year.
The beard was totally underrated by me. And I didn’t appreciate just how cold my chin used to always be.
So, for men listening to the podcast, if you’re somewhere cold think about growing a beard.
And, for women, I guess, get a really thick scarf.
Unless you can, you know, grow a beard. In which case, power to you. Go for it.
So yeah, I thought I would go out here for a walk tonight and just have a chat to you guys.
Come up with some topics to chat about. I hadn’t really thought of any.
So, I’ll just keep chatting away until I come up with some. I guess one thing I can do is sort of review the Bill Bryson book that I recently read or, rather, listened to.
So, I listened to this as an audio book. This was amazing. So, Bill Bryson’s an author.
I believe he’s from the US. I think he’s from Dartmouth College, actually. So, a University over in the US.
And he wrote a book called, I think it’s either Down Under or In A Sunburned Country. I’ve seen both titles.
So, I think it depends on if you get it and it’s the British version, which is probably going to be In A Sunburnt Country, and I think that he made the US version of the book just Down Under, or something like that.
Anyway, I should’ve reviewed it straight after having read it, but I only just remembered now that I hadn’t.
So, I really recommend reading it. This guy’s great. He’s a really good writer.
Very high level of English that he uses, although you will definitely understand it even if you’re at intermediate, upper intermediate, and getting into advanced with regards to your Australian English.
I think if you can understand me and the kind of language that I use, he’s obviously a lot more advanced, but I think you’ll be fine.
Anyway, he’s really funny. He’s kind of Australian with regards to his humour, because he takes the piss out of himself.
He takes the mickey out of himself. Meaning that he makes fun of himself. He pokes fun at himself.
He makes himself the centre of a lot of his jokes.
And so, he came over to Australia, and I think this book was in the late 90s.
It was probably… I think it was ’97 or ’98 that he was out here. And he toured the country.
So, he went to… all over the place. He was in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide.
He went to Perth, and then drove up the coast there. He also goes to Alice Springs, Darwin, Brisbane, and I think even Cairns.
So, he really hits all the big major cities in Australia, and sort of… you get to see Australia through his eyes, ’cause he describes what the locals are like.
What the local people are like. He describes what the places are like that he goes to.
He talks constantly about our culture, our politics, our history, our language.
And so, I think if you guys get this book, if you download it from Audible or something online whether it’s an audio book or the physical book or a PDF of the book, whatever it is, I think you guys’ll get a lot out of it.
Aside from the fact that he will have. Really good English for you guys to be reading and practicing, and also obviously listening too, but that you’ll get to see Australia through his eyes as an American.
And so, despite myself obviously being an Australian, it was really interesting to read his book, because I got to see my own country through the eyes of a foreigner, through the eyes of an American.
And I’ve just seen a fox run in front of me. That was interesting. Little dog.
So, we have Red Foxes in Australia that are a pest species, and I’m just walking through the park at the moment.
And yeah, he’s obviously out hunting, looking for food. He just ran right in front of me about five metres away.
I was like, is that a rabbit? And then, I realised it’s a lot bigger than a rabbit. It’s a little dog.
So, anyway yeah, red foxes. They were introduced to Australia I think in the 1800s by the British, by the English.
I don’t know if it was for hunting or if it was more to do with just trying to make Australia more like Britain, which is the reason they introduced a lot of pest species here in Australia.
But yeah, when you get here you might be surprised, especially if you’re from Western Europe, I think, where they have red foxes, you’ll be surprised to see these guys running around Australia.
Anyway, back to this book. I think it’s absolutely brilliant. He writes really well.
He’s really funny. He’s really witty.
He’s very in-depth with his analysis of things as well, and there’s a lot of pop culture in there too.
Like, he talks about current affairs, or at least it makes jokes that are a bit “pop culture-y”.
So, in the realm of pop culture.
That sort of happens when we put the “-y” sound on the end of it, the Y on it.
But, that’s me playing with the English language there, guys.
But yeah, so I would definitely read it again. I reckon you guys should definitely check it out.
His name is Bill Bryson, and I will double check, but I believe it’s called In A Sunburnt Country.
And Australia has that name because we have the ozone layer above us, or the hole in the ozone layer just above us, directly above us.
And so, a lot of UV gets through and sunburns as a result of being exposed to sunlight and receiving, you know, quite a high dose of UV radiation, sunburns in Australia are very common.
And so, Australia quite often as well, I assume, because of the aridity, the dryness, the heat, it has been referred to throughout our history by a lot of different names, but one of them is “The Sunburnt Country”.
So, I think it’s called In Sunburnt Country, or it’ll be called Down Under.
Either way, his name is Bill Bryson, B I L L, and then, his surname which is B R Y S O N. I think it is BrySON.
I think you guys really like it. So, definitely check it out.
And I might leave it at that for this Walking With Pete episode.
I hope you guys enjoyed it and I’ll see you soon.
Peace out guys.
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