Practice your listening skills by listening to this podcast episode of “The chinwag”

What Do I Miss About England – The Chinwag

What is “The chinwag”

Welcome to the first episode of “The Chinwag” – As you know, in British English, chinwag means to have a chat and that is the idea with these episodes.

This is a little different to my regular podcast as I am not trying to teach you a new phrase or answer some questions you have about English. I am not here to talk to you like you are student. My goal is a little different. 

The idea for “The Chinwag” is to give you some genuine listening practice. Listening is such an important thing when learning a language so I wanted to give you a hand. It is not easy to find listening materials when you are learning English and I have the same problem in Japanese, so I thought this was a good idea.

I will talk naturally just like I would with a friend or family member about various topics from the news to my interests and everything in between! It is good for you because you will hear me speak naturally so you can get used to native speed English and you will learn lots of new words as they come up naturally in conversation. 

From time to time I might get some special guests on the podcast but most of the time it will just be me chatting about random topics. I hope you enjoy it!

What DO I Miss ABout England?

In this episode, I answer a question I get all the time from my students here in Japan. That question is…

What do you miss about England?

I get this question all the time, and I guess that is because I am living in a country which is different from the one I was born in, but the answer is a little complicated. 

In this episode I will talk about what it is like to live far away from all of your family and friends. How do we keep in touch and how do I deal with the homesickness. It can be tricky sometimes but with modern technology and internet access it is not as bad as it might seem. However the pandemic really emphasised the distance between me and the people I left behind. I also talk about what it is like to see major events in their lives through facebook rather than in person.

I also talk about another thing I miss about England and that is how British food is basically trash but I really miss some strange food from my home. Everyone knows English food is not great but there are some things that I just haven’t been able to replace. Almost all of my favourite foods from back home are not available in Japan and I have to wait for people to send me them from the UK!

I discuss how much England and my home town of Sheffield has changed since 2016 when I left to come to Japan and why I don’t think it is a good thing. There are a lot of reasons that I decided to leave the UK and why I don’t really want to go back.

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