Learn English l Live Stream l Sunday English Lesson Live Stream September 19th

hello everybody i'm dr don  and i'm joining you today  

for another english danny channel live  stream come on in and get comfortable

all right so just remember that uh i will address  your questions and comments at the end of today's  

live stream so if you have any questions or  comments you can leave them in the chat and i  

will take a look at them later also if you have a  topic that you want to see me address in a future  

live stream you can leave suggestions for future  live streams as well all right well let's see who  

we've got joining us today we've started the live  stream and we've got a few people joining in i  

already have a few comments coming in that's great  okay well actually um in fact i have something  

a little special for today's live stream because  today uh my idea for today's live stream came from  

questions and comments left by viewers in our  previous live streams so in previous live streams  

viewers would often ask things like how  can i study english how can i get better  

at english and uh i'm going to show you a  resource that you can use and it's a free  

online resource that you can use to help with your  english study now you might know about it already  

even if you do know about it i might show  you some new things to do with it but if  

you don't know about this resource then it's  something that i'm going to show you right now  

and the resource is called project gutenberg  so let me share my screen and i'll show you  

how to find it so we're going to share our screen  here and let's just start with a basic search

so if you just look up  project wittenberg like this

uh and this is the website it's  gutenberg.org not dot com but dot o-r-g

um and it says free e-books uh but the thing  is these aren't just um ebooks these are all uh  

books this website hosts books and other  works has digital copies of works that  

are all in the public domain public domain  that means that they're creative works that  

are not under copyright protection uh the  public owns them nobody else really owns them  

so for example the disney corporation owns mickey  mouse they have the copyright on mickey mouse but  

nobody owns shakespeare or sherlock holmes those  are in the public domain and so on this site you  

can find works in ebook form or you can also read  them online so it's free and let me actually show  

you so how could you find a work one thing you  could do is you could use this tab here frequently  

downloaded you can see here this one frequently  downloaded and you'll see the top books and  

there's several different examples these are all  books that people have downloaded and looked at  

let's take a look at this one alright so this is  a famous book alice's adventures in wonderland  

and you can see that you can of course  download a plain text form you can get a  

kindle thing to read on a kindle or another  reading device but you can also read it  

online and the whole text is here so just to look  through so you can see the whole thing is here

and it's divided into these chapters you can see

so let's take a look at this first chapter all  right so let me show you how you can use this  

to learn a little bit of english so you can read  something like the very beginning of this this  

text here the the first chapter down the rabbit  hole where it says alice was beginning to get  

very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank  and of having nothing to do once or twice she  

had peeped into the book her sister was reading  but it had no pictures or conversations in it and  

what is the use of a book thought alice without  pictures or conversations so she was considering  

in her own mind as well she could before the  hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid  

whether the pleasure of making a daisy chain would  be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the  

daisies when suddenly a white rabbit with pink  eyes ran close by her there was nothing so very  

remarkable in that nor did alice think it's so  very much out of the way to hear the rabbit say  

to itself oh dear oh dear i shall be late when she  thought it over afterwards it occurred to her that  

she ought to have wondered at this but at the time  it all seemed quite natural but when the rabbit  

actually took a watch out of its waistcoat  pocket and looked at it and then hurried on  

alice started to her feet for it flashed across  her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit  

with either a waistcoat pocket or a watch to  take out of it and burning with curiosity she ran  

across the field after it and fortunately just  in time to see it pop down a large rabbit hole  

under the hedge in another moment down went alice  after it never once considering how in the world  

she was to get out again so in just this  little passage you can see that there are  

actually some interesting vocabulary words  that you can learn about uh one example  

is bank what's a bank in this case you may know a  bank is a place where people deposit their money  

but bank has another meaning so a bank is  also the land beside a river or lake which  

leads down to the water and in this story at the  beginning alice is sitting on the bank of a river  

with her sister and in the story it says she  peeps at the book what does it mean to peep at  

something to peep is to look quickly or  secretively at something and we usually use  

uh this verb with the expression at peep at or  peep into in the story she peeps into the book  

you could also say alice peeped at her sister's  book she took a quick look at it that's all  

and it wasn't uh it wasn't interesting  to her she stopped looking at it  

um and also uh there's this bit where it  says there's nothing remarkable in that  

remarkable is an interesting word and it means  worthy of attention something that's worth noting  

worth remarking and alice didn't think the white  rabbit was very remarkable at first even though  

it talked and of course most rabbits that we see  don't talk to themselves it's wearing a waistcoat  

which is a formal vest that you wear over a top  of a shirt and it pulls a pocket watch out of it

and also in the story says that alice started to  her feet to start this is another vocabulary word  

that you might know start meaning to begin but  start can also mean to move your body suddenly  

because something had surprised you or frightened  you and in the story alice started to her feet  

when she realized something strange was happening  and the title of this chapter is interesting as  

well down the rabbit hole that's actually uh  saying uh in english to go down the rabbit hole  

it means to get interested in something and  to lose time pursuing that thing or to begin  

an adventure so you might say to your friends  i went down the youtube rabbit hole yesterday  

and i watched videos for hours okay so these are  just a few examples of seeing english sentences  

seeing vocabulary seeing different expressions  and you could get just from a short passage  

a short passage in a book and you know the english  here even though this book is more than 100 years  

old the english still sounds pretty modern pretty  normal to most people i mean i would i would think  

it would sound polite uh maybe high level but it's  not archaic it doesn't sound that old-fashioned  

really still sounds kind of new and so this is  a useful kind of work to look at and here's the  

good thing is that because it's online because  it's digital if you want to know what this means  

in your own language you could just pop it into  google translate so let me stop here for a second  

and i'll share another screen with  you i'll show you an example there  

so let's take a look here so here i've shown  you an example so uh taken from the story in  

another moment down went alice after it never  once considering how in the world she was  

to get out again and you can just translate  that passage into another language like this

and if you look at the translations  maybe if you speak arabic you can  

take a look at this translation it's  actually not a perfect translation  

um usually you'll you'll get the main idea  you'll you'll usually get the main idea but  

sometimes the translation may sound a little odd  and when that happens that's often a sign that  

maybe there's some idiomatic expression going on  and in this case this expression how in the world  

is the idiom that the translator is having  a little bit of difficulty translating  

so that idiom how in the world or sometimes  what in the world that's actually an idiom  

meaning uh you're indicating that you're surprised  or shocked so you could say what in the world are  

you doing or how in the world did this happen so  it's a way of expressing ah you complete surprise  

or complete shock and in this case uh alice never  considering how in the world which she'll be  

surprised at later she was to get back out of that  rabbit hole all right so that's one way of using  

this resource is uh to look up things  uh read chat read set read selections  

use the translator if you're not sure what  something means but let me show you another  

way you can do it how do you find material how do  you find things that might be interesting to read  

so we found this one we found this example by just  choosing top books but you can also do a search  

so you could do a search uh let's search  for our old friend mr sherlock holmes  

so and then you see oh wait a minute there's a  number of books about sherlock holmes there's  

adventures of sherlock holmes  and you can also read this online

and you can jump to a chapter let's take a look  the second chapter the redheaded league right  

so you can see in this little section here um  this the narrator is mr watson the friend of  

sherlock holmes he's saying i had called upon my  friend mr sherlock holmes one day in the autumn of  

last year and found him in deep conversation with  a very stout floored faced elderly gentleman with  

fiery red hair with an apology for my intrusion  i was about to withdraw when holmes pulled  

me abruptly into the room and closed the door  behind me you could not possibly have come at a  

better time my dear watson he said cordially i was  afraid that you were engaged so i am very much so  

then i can wait in the next room not at all this  gentleman mr watson has been my partner and helper  

in many of my most successful cases and i have  no doubt that he will be of the utmost use to me  

in yours also and just in this little section  here we have some vocabulary we can learn as  

well like for example stout what does that word  mean and from the context we might be able to  

guess that stout means a person with a very  fat or heavy build so a person who looks kind  

of strong and thick but they've got some extra  weight on them they're a little chubby maybe  

stout is another way of describing that in a more  polite way and then it says that he's florid-faced  

fluoride face of fluoride means flushed red so  you know how some people might have their faces  

are always kind of reddish and that's what that  means here it's a person whose face is kind of  

floored it always looks like he's flushed and  he has fiery red hair fiery means related to  

fire f-i-r-e fiery means it has the color of  fire so his hair is red like fire can be read  

and he says that he says i gave an apology  for my intrusion an intrusion means an act of  

going into a place or a situation where you're  unwelcome or uninvited and he says i was about  

to withdraw withdrawal means to leave a place  or situation i was about to pull back when he  

abruptly suddenly and unexpectedly pulled me into  the next room and then he spoke to him cordially  

cordially means in a warm and friendly way and he  says oh you seem to be engaged engaged can mean  

you have an arrangement to be married but that's  not what it means here engaged really just means  

busy or occupied i was afraid you were engaged  meaning i was afraid you were busy or occupied  

and he says well i am but this i want you to  meet this person because he says he can be  

the utmost help to you utmost meaning to the  greatest or the most extreme amount of help  

so those are a couple of books just a couple of  examples that you can uh take a look at uh and uh  

use to help study english and if you want some  more guidelines on that well actually one of our  

english danny channel members teacher sarah  will have a video coming out in a few hours  

explaining how you can do self-study with reading  so if you want some more details on how to use  

reading to improve your english  and maybe how to use this resource  

to improve your english check out sarah's video  later which will give you more details about  

reading for self-study i hope you'll take a  look at that and maybe learn something from her  

as well okay so that is a resource a free resource  that anyone can use online to help get better at  

english i hope you take a look and i hope maybe  you uh learn in a more interesting and fun way  

now let's start to take a look at some of your  questions and comments so please share questions  

and comments uh with me below and i'll take a look  at those so let's take a look at uh who has joined  

us today and what people are saying uh so our  first comment is interested that's always great  

i love to see people being interested in what we  have to say uh a high teacher from tian nguyen  

and hi from nilofar karimi and hi from muhammad  cuckoo jamaa good morning from saudi arabia good  

morning to you as well hello uh from pashtun and  ali and abdellah good morning to or good afternoon  

uh to all of you that's great okay uh i'm ready  i like to learn english but i don't understand  

that's okay uh uh just if you understand  a little bit um and maybe i things that i  

showed you on the screen can help and  you can also check out the video later  

to learn a little bit more uh so here's  a question so someone asks where are you  

from and i'm from the united states and uh like  everybody at the english danny channel we're all  

from the us uh and i am from the united states  but right now i am living in uh korea all right so  

uh fraud is saying hello from herat afghanistan  okay well hello to you sir france is in the house  

says matt lindell well welcome to you france  or welcome to your country that's great uh  

okay daisy lee is saying hi teacher and kareem's  saying hi sir there aren't subtitles um uh  

yes uh there should be some some chirons at the  bottom some titles at the bottom with for some  

of my comments but not all of the the comments uh  are going to have uh subtitles i'm afraid we can't  

type them up fast enough to get them all in there  so but we try to get the main ideas into our into  

our subtitles uh which topics were you discussing  so today we talked about using project gutenberg  

for self study reading with a free online resource  you know one thing i will say also about project  

gutenberg is they've got hundreds of books  thousands of books really on there and some  

of them are very old but some of them even though  they're about 150 years old they still are pretty  

usable for modern english and because they're  a bit older because they're maybe 100 years old  

nothing in them i would say there's not  you're not likely to find something that's  

crazy or maybe immoral or indecent they're decent  books so um accessible to just about anybody uh  

for for reading purposes and for learning  um suitable for almost all ages as well  

uh so uh that's another good reason to use this  resource uh is because uh you know it's it's uh  

it's more trustworthy i would say uh  you're gonna find some pretty good  

materials there now i can't vouch for everything  because again they've digitized thousands and  

thousands of books so i haven't read them all so  i don't know everything that's on there but when  

i looked at the list of top hundred downloads  all of those books are classic classic english  

language books very easy to read well not easy  to read very worth reading um and you can learn  

a lot from from all of the all of them really  uh okay so let's check out some other comments  

greetings from mexico danielle rico is  saying greetings from mexico that's great

and then matt is let's see akbar khan is saying hi  there okay very great and then a couple of people  

are talking with each other that's also very good  uh i like it when uh our users interact with each  

other as well that's very good um okay so okay one  person says oh it's a little unclear okay so maybe  

just seeing it on the screen may not be extremely  clear okay so here uh here's what i'll say so  

after the stream uh we'll put i'll put a link  i'll put a link to the resource uh in the in  

the description okay so you can come back to this  stream afterwards and you should be able to see  

the link there and follow the link uh maybe maybe  we can also put up a link to both of the books  

that i talked about you could sort of follow those  and take a look for yourself and see in better  

detail uh than you were able to send so uh upendra  chakma said it's unclear i can see nothing clearly  

okay so we'll we'll put some links up uh in  this live stream afterwards that you can use  

and maybe get a clearer view okay so that's a good  comment thank you very much um i want to accept a  

scholarship how can i do this um i i'm not sure i  don't know how to answer that because i don't know  

what the scholarship is if you've been offered  then accepting should be as easy as saying okay i  

accept but if you want to apply for a scholarship  that may be more difficult there's usually a  

process that will be explained uh on the website  on a website somewhere which says how to apply  

for this scholarship um and you'll have to you'll  have to check that um for whatever scholarship it  

is you have to check each one on its own okay and  matt is warning that you should avoid translation  

and i would say that yes in general like google  translate and these translators you do not want  

to rely on them because you can it can interfere  with your learning but for some people depending  

on your level you might find it useful uh to  to uh to use some translations here and there  

um so so his advice is not wrong it's definitely  right but i think for some people with maybe a  

lower level of english you might find it helpful  so i'm i'm not going to say don't do it at all  

but i will say try to not do it the less you  use the more you try to figure on your own  

the easier it'll be the quicker you'll learn okay  all right let's see some other comments questions  

uh good afternoon from myanmar hi from the  philippines watching from kashmir india hi from  

france another person watching from france ido  is great to see you and then okay so nasir malik  

said oh wait okay let me ask this one first that  was put up put that back up i'll check that one  

what is the difference between living in the city  and life in the city okay so living in the city is  

talking about an activity you're saying what is uh  it's an activity that you could talk about or ask  

about what is living in the city like or you could  say i'm living in the city now life in the city  

uh is about is not about an activity but it's  about the experience what is life in the city like  

okay so you're asking really about the experience  more than the activity there uh what is life in  

the city uh life in the big city again you're  talking about what is the experience what does  

it feel like so you're kind of getting more at the  feel of it okay so now uh nasir malik asks can you  

please tell us about the placement of accent and  i mean how to be like a native speaker well this  

is a very uh in a sense this is a very complicated  subject because uh it's hard to just teach simply  

um but i would say there's a couple of ways to  learn about accents and get better with accents  

you can listen to native speakers you  can listen to songs also to some degree  

but i would say that one thing to note is you can  also use dictionaries because one thing to note is  

any english word with more than one syllable  syllable means units of pronunciation so  

uh here one syllable words are like hit hard  think do am was be those are one syllable words  

uh my name is two syllables donald hello welcome  those are two syllables right you could hear  

there's two uh two uh units of pronunciation there  welcome but we usually say it fast so it comes out  

like welcome but there's still those two units  welcome uh uh unit unit so that's two syllables  

um uh thinking thinking thinking um and then there  are more syllables pronunciation and a lot of the  

way a lot of children get better at pronunciation  pronouncing english is they pronounce things by  

the syllables pronunciation and then they  start to run them together pronunciation  

pronunciation accent accent accent native speaker  native speaker native speaker so you could that's  

you can use that technique too break things down  by their accent by their syllables and pronounce  

the syllables and start running them together uh  and most english words with more than one syllable  

have a natural accent for example the word accent  the first part of that word will always be spoken  

more loudly than the second you don't say accent  you say accent uh native speaker native not native  

speaker not speaker when you do it the other  way you start to hear the difference right  

uh so that's what he's asking about with accent  and sounding like a native speaker so you listen  

you listen to uh native speakers talk and then  you practice and you can practice by dividing into  

syllables and then running the syllables  together okay so that that's just a that's  

that's my quickest way of explaining  it that i can do i hope that's helpful  

um and then give me a suggestion on how  to learn self-study in english speaking um  

there are uh different different ways you  can do that but one one thing you could  

do uh one thing you could do is um you could  use a siri or some sort of voice recognition  

on your phone and try to talk in english to it and  see if it registers the words you're trying to say  

and then you can get some direct feedback  on how well you're pronouncing because if  

the machine can understand that you're trying  to say these english words then you must be  

coming pretty close so that that might be a way  to do it uh okay any other any suggestions oh

okay all right so uh so danny's telling me  that we actually are going to have a video  

specifically on that topic sometime next week so  uh tar uh there is going to be video on that topic  

uh on our channel and on our facebook page next  week so check that out and you'll actually get  

more uh more details than i can provide in just  a very simple uh little chat here okay so let's  

uh check out some more um comments smile smile  says i try to practice it practice my accent  

every time i hear from a native speaker  i'm from thailand okay well welcome  

thailand the land of smiles and uh called  herself smile smile that's great uh thank  

you very much sir for explaining  thank you very much i appreciate it  

uh and francis says i understand a little okay  i understand a little okay good that's it first  

you understand a little and then you understand a  little more and a little more and then eventually  

understand everything i hope so let's uh let's  hope that we can practice and get a little better  

every time okay let's see we have any other  comments and questions we've heard from a lot of  

people here um remember that we're going to have  a video on uh more details about using self-study  

with reading uh later on so a few hours after uh  the live stream today okay all right so a few more  

people saying hello and hello to all of you glad  you could join us today uh thank you very much for  

tuning in all right so um we're going to  have some more live streams for you this week  

and then i'll be back for another one i  believe two weeks uh after today all right  

so uh i hope if there are if there aren't any  more questions and comments i hope to see all of  

you next time all right thank you all for watching  and i'll see you in the next live stream okay bye