I’ve been writing scripts for our podcasts for over six years and I think it’s time to get your suggestions on new topics. We do get emails from listeners with suggestions, but it would be nice to share ideas here on the blog.

We have nine categories of regular podcasts that are released every Monday and Friday:

- Business
- Daily Life
- Dining
- Entertainment
- Health and Medicine
- Relationships
- Shopping
- Transportation
- Travel

Please give us your suggestions within these nine categories.  Within these categories, we try to select topics that are relevant (appropriate; of interest) for a large number of our listeners, and include vocabulary and language useful beyond just that one script and podcast.  If you’d like, you can do a quick search on our homepage (search for your topic suggestion under “Search Podcasts” on the left-hand side of the page) to see if we have already covered (included; used) that topic.

Your suggestions are very important to us and we always appreciate them.  Keep in mind, though, that with this post, we are only asking for topics for our regular podcast scripts/dialogues (not for the English Cafe, which we’ll ask about another time).  We can’t promise that all of your suggestion will be included in future podcasts, but we’ll do our best to include the most popular ones.  Let us hear from you!

~ Lucy

Join us at English as a Second Language (ESL) Podcast in celebrating our sixth anniversary with our annual video episode! This one is called The (Really) Serious Episode, and when you watch it, you’ll see why.

Thanks to all of you who have listened to us the past year, and especially to those who have either donated money or become a member of ESL Podcast.  Your financial support is necessary for us to continue.  If you’re not a member, consider joining today.

Thank you again!

~Jeff, Lucy, and the ESL Podcast Team

P.S. The transcript for the video is below.

Video Transcript

Welcome to English as a Second Language Podcast’s Sixth Anniversary Video.  I’m your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.  We want to begin our episode by thanking you, our listeners.  We recently released our one-thousandth episode and we have thousands of you in almost every country around the world listening and improving your English.

Now, you may know that in the past, our anniversary videos have been funny, or tried to be funny.  But not this year.  This year, we’re going to do a serious anniversary video podcast.  It’s serious business learning English, and we thought that we should do a serious video podcast this year.

Now, before I do that, let me just say that some people have emailed us suggestions about things we should do.  People have emailed and said, “Oh, Jeff, you should wear a funny hat.  And you’re from Minnesota, maybe, maybe a Viking hat because the Minnesota Vikings are the Minnesota football team, a hat, something like this.  Well, I’m not going to do it.  I’m not going to wear a hat.  That’s just not serious.  It’s not dignified.

Where was I?  Oh, yes, I also to want to thank those who help us here at ESL Podcast:  Jessica, one of our writers and our customer service representative; Sue, our video editor and proofer; Warren Ediger of successfulenglish.com who writes blog posts for us; and Adriano, our wonderful webmaster.

Before I forget, some other people have emailed other suggestions, things they thought would be funny on our anniversary video podcast.  Some people said, “Oh, you should grow a mustache, you know, something, something maybe like this.  Oh, that would be funny.”  Well, it’s not funny.  As I said, this is a serious podcast episode and I’m not going to wear a mustache, mustache, just to be funny – not going to happen.

Our biggest thanks go to those of you who are members of ESL Podcast or who buy courses in our store.  Your financial support is absolutely necessary for us.  If you’re not a member, go to our website at eslpod.com and become a member and help us keep this podcast going.

Now, one more thing I got as a suggestion.  Someone who thought it would be funny if I sang on this video episode, as I have in some of our previous anniversary video podcasts.  They suggested I sing something by the Bee Gees, something like, you know, something like one of those horrible 70’s songs – [sings “How Deep is Your Love”]. No, that’s not going to happen.  I’m not going to sing the Bee Gees as part of this anniversary video podcast.

Finally, I want to thank Dr. Lucy Tse, our producer and scriptwriter, for her wonderful work this year.  Lucy also wanted to send a serious message as part of this episode. Lucy?

Thank you.  From Los Angeles, California, I’m Jeff McQuillan.  Thank you for listening.

If you own a Nokia phone, you can now download ESL Podcast audio files directly onto your phone with our new Ovi app. Go here for more information and to download the app onto your phone.  (If you like the app, please rate it five stars and write a good review for us!)

For iPhone users, you can simply access the podcast on iTunes.

For Android users, any program that can access an RSS file will work.  Try the Google Listen app.  You will need to enter our RSS feed address, which is:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/EnglishAsASecondLanguagePodcast

Happy listening!

~Jeff

Photo Credit: Nokia Store, Used with permission

Because some of you requested it, Lucy recently appeared on two English Cafe episodes so that listeners can hear more than one voice when listening to the Cafe’s cultural topics:  English Cafe 275 (SeaWorld) and 277 (X Games).

Please tell us what you think.  You opinion is very important to us.

Today we have a guest blogger, Warren Ediger. You can read his explanation of 2009 buzzwords in the next post.  (What’s a buzzword, you ask?  Read Warren’s post to find out!) Warren will be writing posts every now and then (sometimes) about American culture and English, and we are very happy to have him writing for us.  He is an experienced ESL teacher here in Southern California, as well as one of the top (best) online English tutors I know.

Be sure to take a look at Warren’s website, SuccessfulEnglish.com, which has some excellent resources and tips for improving your English.  Those interested in online tutoring can contact Warren via (using, by means of) email by going to his website.

Let’s give Warren a warm (friendly) welcome to the blog!

~Jeff

We have often said that we both have faces for radio. Here is further proof (evidence) of this.

For our German-speaking listeners, there was a radio story about ESL Podcast on Deutschlandfunk.  You can listen to the story here.

Look for the story “Englisch per Podcast: Sprachenlernen mit Humor.”

~ Jeff & Lucy

P.S. See the comments below for an English translation from Rolf, one of our German-speaking listeners.  Thank you, Rolf!

Update: Audio file can now be found here.

In English Cafe 150, I talked about a group of Americans called the Amish. They are a group of Christians who have very traditional values and don’t have a lot of modern technology in the places where they live. They speak a language called Pennsylvania Dutch, but they also learn English in school.

In the podcast, I said that Pennsylvania Dutch is related to a language spoken in the Netherlands, but this was incorrect. Pennsylvania Dutch is actually related to German.

I want to thank Martin, a listener from Germany, for pointing out (finding and telling us) our mistake. We try to be as accurate (correct) as possible in our podcasts, but sometimes there are errors.

~Jeff

Just a short note of thanks to all of you who emailed and posted comments on our third anniversary video and on Lucy’s post about my birthday. All of us here at ESL Podcast thank you for your kind comments and expressions of appreciation.

I am especially thankful to have received such nice comments on my 29th birthday. (I think that’s right – does 29 come after 44?)

Thank you again for all of your support!

~Jeff

Thanks to Bill from the University of Malaya for mentioning ESL Podcast in a recent article that appeared in the daily national newspaper, The Sun, in Malaysia.  We always appreciate our listeners and supporters mentioning ESL Podcast to their friends, family, newspaper reporters, dentists, hair dressers – well, anyone you think may be interested!

You can find the article (in English) here.

~Jeff

Many thanks to Professor Bill Templar of the University of Malaysia for his letter to The China Post last week. Professor Templar recommends ESL Podcast to those interested in improving their English.

You can see his letter published here.

~Jeff