Learn Australian English in this Live Episode of Aussie English where I discuss 15 idioms commonly used in Australia and then open it up into a Q&A session.
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Announcement: FREE eBook & audio book course!
Sign up to the email list at Aussie English to get a copy of the free ebook & audio book An Introduction to Using English Contractions Like a Native.
[sdm_download id=”1680″ fancy=”1″]Check out the video below where I run you guys through how to sign up for the Aussie English email list as well as show you the free eBook & audio book, and explain a few things about what I plan to do with the email list.
Announcement: FREE ebook & audio book course!
G’day guys. Welcome to this little announcement episode of Aussie English. Today I have something exciting to announce for you or to you. I spent the entire weekend working on a little idea that I had to put together a free ebook and free audio book where I read most of the chapters in this ebook, where I cover the contractions that are commonly used in English. So, it’s sort of like a dress rehearsal for me to practice putting together these kinds of materials for you for when I may do this in the future for more advanced and more extensive audio courses, effectively.
So, this audio book and ebook that I put together is called An Introduction to Using English Contractions Like a Native. And, in this audio book I go through the contractions GONNA, WANNA, GOTTA, HAFTA and NEEDA, as well as a few others there in the bonus section. And so, all you guys have to do in order to get access to this is jump over to the Aussie English webpage at www.theaussieenglishpodcast.com or just hit the Sign Up button via the Facebook page. I wonder if it’ll actually let me do it. Test. So, it sends you straight across. You type in your email. So, I’ll put in mine. Pete. Hit enter. Subscribe. And it should send you to the Thanks Page. All you have to do once you get to the Thanks Page here is click Follow This Link and then click the Download file and type in the letters or numbers that you see. So, just prove that you’re not a robot. Bam! (It) download’s down the bottom here, and that’s it.
You’ll get three book files that you can use, an .epub file, a .mobi file and a .pdf file. For some reason when I was trying to upload and organize this audio book and ebook… So, I have to upload the ebook file and pay for that and then download it again, because I use a program called Bookwright in order to do it. For some reason it wouldn’t allow me to download the PDF via the website. I don’t know what’s going on. I think they’ve got some issues. So, I’ve had to include the example PDF out of the program, which is just lower quality, but I know that a lot of you aren’t going to necessarily want to use .epub files or .mobi files on your computer. Although, you can if you just use your… whatever it is, iBook on a mac and there’s probably some equivalent ebook reader on a PC.
So, I’ve included the less than perfect PDF just in case you want to use it. It’s still fine it’s just that the images aren’t of the highest quality in that book even though there’s only a front cover and a picture of a koala in there. So, it’s not a big deal.
But yeah, so you download it. It’ll download in a few minutes. It’s about 72meg or so. And then, you’ll just go to your folder that will have… where are we? If I go to ebooks and then An Introduction… and you should get these eight files here. So, these are the mp3s. So, we’ll just close that. You’ll get a list of those mp3s. I go through the Introduction and then I go through eight of these different words, or seven* of these different words that are common common common contractions. I probably have used some in this episode already without thinking. And yeah, it’s just a little thank you to you guys for your constant support, your constant encouragement, and just listening to the podcast and being part of the community.
So, I might just show you too that you would just click on the unzip file, or the zip file*. It’ll unzip. You can load it up here, and there you go. You get these… all of these files here, these mp3 files. And again, you would just select them, drag them into iTunes or whatever it is that you listen to these mp3s via. Or you just click on the different book files and you’ll get to run through the book.
So, yeah, I would definitely love to see what you guys think. So, once you download it and check it out let me know what you think.
I guess a little something extra to add is that all of these chapters are just me riffing. So, me just reading out of… well not reading, but thinking off the top of my head and running through these things using natural English as it’s spoken. So, I haven’t actually read off a transcript. So, some of these sentences are going to be long. It’s going to be like I’m having a conversation with you in these chapters. So, I’ve tried to do it as best as I can. You’ll notice that I’ve used WANNA and all these different contractions throughout the book. See, HAFTA here and GONNA. Any time I’ve highlighted them in the actual PDF where you can see it’s where you will actually hear me say it exactly like that. You’ll hear me say WANNA, you’ll hear me say GONNA, you’ll hear me say HAFTA, NEEDA, etc.
One thing I might add is that every now and then I don’t contract it, and this is something that English speakers anyway. We don’t always contract things. We don’t always uncontract things, or leave them as GOING TO or HAVE TO instead of GONNA and HAFTA. And so, I don’t know what’s going on inside my brain when I read or when I think and I’m just talking, and what makes me decide we’re going to contract it this time and then not contract it this time, but that’s just something to be aware of. I wouldn’t practice these things in order to always use them, but I think definitely give them a practice to start with so that you know that pronunciation, because it’ll make speaking quickly incredibly easy.
So, I think too part of the reason I often say things uncontracted is because I’m trying to speak clearly so that you guys can better understand me. So, if I was going to speak like this all the time you’d probably have a little bit more trouble understanding me, you know what I mean?
Anyway, that was the announcement guys. I’m going to chuck this up on the podcast just so that everyone who doesn’t necessarily come onto the Facebook page will also have an opportunity to sign up and check this out. So, definitely jump on Facebook. I’ve put it up in a post where, again, all you have to do is read the instructions, follow the Sign Up button here, go to the Aussie English website, subscribe to the email down here, and then hit subscribe, and you’ll be redirected to where you can download the audio book and ebook.
One thing I might add too, again, another thing that I’ll add at the end is that I’m not interested in spamming you guys. When you sign up your email I know it’s a bit deal, I know that you’re trusting me with private information, and to be honest all I’m going to do is email you when and if I have things that like this audio course to either give you for free or offer as a paid product. That is the only time that at least in the near future I can envisage emailing you. It’s never going to be constant harassment to “Come to the website, check out this blog post, do this, try this, do this!” It’s just going to be, “Hey, I’ve just made this product. If you want to check it out here you can follow this link and check it out.” That’s all I’m interested in doing at the moment. Anyway, I just wanted to make that clear. I’m not interested in spamming you guys whatsoever. So, you can trust me with your emails. And you can also unsubscribe. If you ever need to unsubscribe, go for it!
That’s probably enough. Thanks again guys, and a special shoutout to Ali, Vanessa, Thibault, Estefania and everyone else who’s been really really engaging on the Facebook community. Juan, Juan as well, or Juan! Thank you guys for your encouragement and support, and just motivating me to keep going and doing what I’m doing, and to continue trying to help you guys and to try and make the best possible products that I can in order to help you guys improve your English, and specifically your Australian English.
So, yeah, I’ll chat to you guys soon. All the best!
If you wish to support me and the many hours of hard work I put into The Aussie English Podcast then please consider donating a few dollars a month via Patreon! The more support I get, the more I can work on The Aussie English Podcast!
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WWP: Aussie English subscription ideas. What do you think?
In this Walking With Pete episode of Aussie English I chat to you guys about my plans to build an online paid subscription for Aussie English in order to allow me to work towards working full-time on the podcast and creating awesome products as well as all the free podcast episodes and videos for you guys!
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WWP: Aussie English subscription ideas. What do you think?
Hey guys, welcome to this episode. It’s just going to be a brief one I guess. I wanted to talk to you about the e that I’ve been uploading. So, I was doing quite a bit this weekend and I got about 5 of them done I think, and [I] went through and wrote out the transcripts, put them all up online. And there were just a few different things that I wanted to chat to you about to see… to get some feedback, to see what you thought. What could I improve with regards to the layout of the episodes? What did you think of the layout of the episodes, and the episodes in general? Are they helping? Are you getting the idea? Am I explaining well enough the basic principles, I guess, of how to make these contractions and how to think of them? Because, ultimately, the most important thing for me in making these Pronunciation episodes is to produce something for you guys that is useful, that you can use to improve your English, your Australian English, whatever you want. These rules transcend Australian English and they are used by English speakers from everywhere in the world, these contraction rules and these pronunciation tips. So, definitely don’t be worried that this is “the way” we speak only in Australia. It’s used everywhere. So, yeah, at the moment I guess the basic idea is I start out by introducing the thing I’m going to be talking about in this episode, in that episode, the one that I make for a given pronunciation theme. And then I try and do that listen and repeat exercise where I just get you to solely focus on your pronunciation of the specific contracted form of the two words or three words depending on the contraction, or the several words that are getting contracted. And then after that, at the moment at least I’m trying to always incorporate some other aspect of English whether it’s a grammatical rule. For example, in the most recent episodes with contracting HAS and HAVE onto different words including, you know, the pronouns, the demonstrative pronouns, the indefinite pronouns and nouns, I’ve been trying to teach you how to use HAS GOT, HAVE GOT, as well as obviously HAS and HAVE with the PAST PARTICIPLE. So, talking about stuff that’s happened in the past. And there’s an example “that’s happened”. And so, I’m trying to be as productive as possible and tie everything in together where you can be practicing multiple things at the same time. So, not only are you practicing your pronunciation, you’re practicing how to contract these words, but then I’m also trying to include these incredibly common grammatical rules like HAS GOT, HAVE GOT, and the HAVE and HAS + PAST PARTICIPLE, and also in the coming episodes with, I think the next set of episodes that I’ve got planned for you guys is including the word WOULD and contracting that, so the conditional [tense] onto all those sorts of words. I have other kinds of small phrases and commonly used expressions that have WOULD in them potentially. So, I’m wanting to also include those, and just always give you as many different things to kind of focus on and help you improve your English as opposed to just give you random example sentences where the only thing we’re working on is the pronunciation of the contraction. So, definitely let me know what you think of that. Is it helping? Are you getting the idea? If you have any suggestions or any ideas for how I could improve these episodes then please please tell me because first and foremost I am here to serve you guys. I’m here to help you guys improve your English as best I can. So, obviously if you’ve got a better suggestion for how I can do that hit me up. Let me know what it is and I will implement that as soon as I can. Aside from that, I guess, a question that I’ve been thinking about with these episodes is the spacing between the examples when I get you to do the exercises. Are the silence gaps between the, I guess, where I get you to repeat things, whether it’s the Listen & Repeat episode… Sorry, whether it’s the Listen & Repeat exercise or the Substitution exercises. Is that space of time long enough? ‘Cause I’m always trying to work out how much time you need to think about these things. So, I have a feeling it might be a bit short at the moment, but let me know if you think otherwise or if you agree because that’s something that I can fix really easily, obviously. So, that was one more thing that I wanted to let you know, and to ask you about. And, I guess, aside from that we can probably just chat about plans for Aussie English in the future. So, I made that announcement episode recently that was a Walking With Pete episode about my plans to try and monetise, to try and get some kind of income, some kind of revenue from Aussie English. So, obviously to try and produce something for you guys worth paying for that will allow you to improve your English at an affordable rate, you know, even if it’s just a small amount of money per month that you could potentially pay. I’m trying to get a nice shot of the city here in the background for you. [You can] probably see over my head there’s Melbourne. So, yeah, I’m trying to come up with ideas for that, and the most recent idea that I had was to sort of again follow along the lines of what Français Authentique has done. And Johan from Français Authentique has what he calls I think it’s L’Academie Français Authentique. So, The French… The Authentic French Academy where he has monthly plans, lesson plans that come out that help you guys work on your French if you’re listening to that podcast and practicing or learning French. And I guess I wanted to do kind of the same thing but maybe expand on it a little bit where the basic idea would be to have a certain theme every month and probably a relatively long episode on that theme, whether it’s about characters in Australian history, whether it’s about historical events, whether it’s about Australia’s sports like AFL or cricket, anything Australia. You know, I would come up with a theme and I would write a lesson plan around that theme that would be maybe 15, 20, maybe even 30 minutes long. You’d get a transcript where you guys could do that. So, it would kind of be like an extended podcast lesson except I would also try and video it, and give you subtitles down the bottom so that you can also watch me when I speak, my mannerisms, my expressions, as I talk. And then on top of that… So, that’s the basic idea. Number 1: have the basic lesson plan, the basic theme for each month. And then, I was thinking that I would break down certain expressions and certain Like A Native collocations or things that I say in these episodes that I think you guys will profit from, that you’ll benefit from, that you could use. So, again, this would be like making my standard Expression or Like A Native episodes. And, again, I would probably do that in video form, MP3 form like a podcast but only for you guys, not released on the podcast, and a manuscript as well or a transcript so that you can read. I’d probably give you exercises to do. So, like, written exercises with answers. And then I was also thinking about doing a set of interviews every month. So, for example, every time I make a… an episode about an expression that was in the basic theme, plan, transcript, whatever you want to call it, for the month I interview people on how they would use that expression, what that expression means to them and if they can give me examples. So, like those Aussie Chinwag lessons. If you guys have been watching those on YouTube where I’ve been interviewing my family quite a bit about small expressions and Like A Native collocations and expressions, phrases, that I’ve done episodes on. I’m trying to tie everything in together. So, that’s the basic idea. I want to be able to teach you about Australia, and give you that basic plan, number 1. Number 2, I want to break down and produce several smaller Like A Native, Expression, Phrasal Verbs, whatever they are episodes of specific expressions, phrases, like a native collocations that I’ve used in the theme that you’re already practicing, in the, you know, that longer Australian thematic episode for the month. And then on top of that I want to go over those things again but in interviews with other native speakers of Australian English. So, that’s the basic idea. I would produce that kind of thing on a monthly basis and release it at the start of each month, and you would pay a small fee to subscribe to that service. So, every month you would get a pack of videos, a pack of MP3s and the transcripts that go with every single one of those episodes that would be exclusively yours as someone who’s paying for that service from Aussie English. Obviously… just swallowed a fly. Excuse me guys. Obviously, I would keep the podcast going, and I still want to be giving you all of this stuff for free. I still want to keep helping you guys, but I also want to be able to do Aussie English, ultimately, full time. I would absolutely adore being able to do this full time, being able to generate an income from this and focus on helping you guys as my full-time job. That is my ultimate goal to be honest. I’m doing my PhD, I’m going to finish my PhD, but once that’s done I wholeheartedly want to continue doing Aussie English and find a way to support myself by doing this, and monetisation seems like obviously the only way to do it. So, that is the basic idea at the moment. I would definitely appreciate, I would definitely really love for you guys to give me some feedback to let me know what you think of those ideas. And again, as always, if you have a better idea or some other suggestions… Sorry, I’ve got to check this path… for how I could better help you guys learn English, for how I could improve these products that I plan on producing and then selling, because that’s ultimately the goal, [it] is to create the best content possible for you guys, then please let me know. Please let me know in a comment. Give me some feedback. Send me a private message if you don’t want to talk about it openly on Facebook. But again, it’s all about producing the best thing that I can for you guys. So, I really have no problem at all from you giving me some feedback even if you completely disagree with me, guys, just let me know what you think. Oh! And I guess also lastly, the plan was also to have private members’ Facebook group or a group on the website where you guys would have access to me all the time, any time that I was awake obviously and online, where I could answer your specific questions, where we could have discussions about that month’s theme, about anything else, and we could work together on just your English in general. I’m all about getting you guys to work together, to foster a community on Facebook, whether it’s openly on the Facebook page as it is or whether it’s in a private group for paying costumers. I absolutely love interacting with you guys so that is also one of my main goals when putting together this service. It’s going to be working side-by-side with you guys to help you dominate and help you, you know, get really really good at your spoken English, whether it’s Australian English, American English, English English, Scottish English, Irish English, whatever you want to call it English, I am at your service and I am here to help you guys succeed in whatever it is that your goal is. So, jump on Facebook, jump on YouTube, jump on the Aussie English website. Send me an email, a message, a comment, give me some feedback. Do you disagree with me? Do you agree with me? Can I do more to help you guys? Let’s just start chatting about this stuff, because I really really want to give this a go and start making an income from it, and be there all the time to keep producing awesome Aussie English products and podcast episodes and videos for you guys. Anyway, this has been a very very long episode, and I’m walking out of the park now down this little track. [It’s] time to go home. I think my throat’s getting a bit dry from talking so much. I think I’m getting a bit too impassioned, getting a bit too excited about Aussie English and about chatting with you guys. And I need to go have dinner I think, and maybe some beers, maybe not. I don’t know. Anyway, I hope you guys have a really really nice evening, nice day, nice night, whatever the time is where you guys are. It’s really nice and warm here and I’m kind of not too happy about the fact that it’s going to 38C tomorrow. So, I’m going to go home and prepare for that, I guess. Anyway, I’ll chat to you later guys. Thanks again!
If you wish to support me and the many hours of hard work I put into The Aussie English Podcast then please consider donating a few dollars a month via Patreon! The more support I get, the more I can work on The Aussie English Podcast!
Check out all the other recent Walking With Pete episodes below!
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AE 425 – Vlog: Greetings in English, Aussie Slang, Car Vocabulary, & Daily Life English
Learn Australian English in this vlog episode of Aussie English where you’ll learn a bunch of Aussie slang, expressions, and daily life vocab, as well as how I use greetings in English.
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Wonderful lesson to learn Australian idioms.
Thank you very much.
Freya, UK
My pleasure Freya 🙂
I have never tried to join to this kind of helps because I find it them boriiiiing.. but not with you mate! You sound very natural and I like it so much! Hopefully one day I can talk like you without being originally from this country!
🙂 Hey Ximena! Keep it up and you will only improve. Glad I can help!